Ethan takes revenge

On any given day, I can find Ethan wandering around the house like this:

This child has a special affinity for his toothbrush.

All my children, actually, love brushing their teeth. It's kind of strange to me...when I say, "Okay, guys, time to brush our teeth!" they get all excited, and race to the bathroom. You would think that I had said, "Okay, guys, time to go to the park!" by the way they react. It's really quite a site.

Ethan, however, is a bit different.

He seems to not be able to stop brushing his teeth.

Now, until recently, I haven't minded this. I would give him his toothbrush when we went in the bathroom, and he would just brush to his little heart's content. No harm, right? He would brush for probably 10 minutes (more if we allowed him), until we actually physically pried the toothbrush out of his little death grip took his toothbrush away from him.

However, now he is actually able to open doors himself (ugh). He is also a fantastic climber.

All of that means that now, he is able to go down the hall, open my bedroom door, then open my bathroom door, push the stool over to the sink, climb up on the stool, reach the toothbrushes (all of them--not just his, by the way) and brush away.

Like I said before, I wouldn't mind this. Really, I wouldn't. Except for two things:

1. Ethan has no discrepancy as to which toothbrush he uses. He might grab Col's, or Daddy's, or mine....it makes no difference to him. That one that he is using in the above pictures is actually Cameron's. (We actually found him one day this week wandering the house with one toothbrush in his mouth, and four more--all of the remaining family members'--in his hands.)

Now, I'm quite sure that reactions on that one will range from the 'that's mildly icky' to the 'I am extremely grossed out by that'--the whole sharing-a-toothbrush-with-someone-else thing--but, personally, I don't find this to be that big of a deal. I mean, my kids have been slobbering and puking on me for years now--I can handle a bit of spit swap every once in a while.

However, even with that being said, this is certainly not something I would want to become a habit.

2. The fits he throws when I tell him that we are all done brushing teeth. Case in point, what happened today when I told him exactly that:

I mean the throw-yourself-down-on-the-floor-and-scream-like-there's-no-tomorrow kind of fits.

But, today.....my-oh-my. Today, it got even better.

Today, my sweet little baby, who is not even two yet, decided to actually take revenge on his mean ol' Momma for not letting him continue brushing.



He left my bedroom (after recovering from his fit) in a seemingly good mood. Everything seemed fine.



Until, not 20 seconds later, I heard a crash.



"What on earth?!" I thought.



Camera still in hand, I ran out into the living room to see this:




That little stinker had--purposefully and with malicious intent, no doubt-- knocked my ficus tree over. All by himself. And, did you notice? He was smiling about it!

Smiling about it, that is, until he saw me in the corner of the room. In an instant, his expression changed. His lip pooched, and he became 'sad' at what he had done. Yeah. Right.

Whoever thinks young children aren't just as smart as adults, and they don't know exactly what they are doing, needs to come live at my house for a day. My littles would change their mind in 24 hours flat. Or less. Guaranteed.